Oakland’s Game 5 heartbreaks

The Athletics have played in five ALDS Game 5’s since the round began in 1995, but have yet to win one: 2000

NYY

7-52001

NYY

5-32002

MIN

5-42003

BOS

4-32012

DET

6-0

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Moments like these are precisely why baseball, despite its often interminably monotonous stretches, remains a beautifully poetic exercise in patience and perseverance. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out —BAM! — there’s a long fly ball to deep rightfield that might miraculously be within the extended reach of a desperate rightfielder.

But an equally desperate fan lunges for the ball.

A home run that could have been fan interference — and a series trending downward for the heavily favored Tigers suddenly got a dramatic momentum shift.

Just when you think you’ve got it figured out — WHIFF! — there’s the anointed ace of the starting rotation pressed into emergency relief duty because there’s no guarantee that he’ll see the mound again in these playoffs. Bases loaded and nobody out, and the future Cy Young Award winner mines a little deeper into that resolve that distinguishes the distinguished.

No runners score. And a team that needed an emotional jolt got an electrical charge.

History might deem Victor Martinez’s Game 4 home run and Max Scherzer’s Game 4 relief effort as merely delaying the inevitable should the Tigers fall in Game 5 tonight in Oakland before what promises to be a rowdy, raucous Oakland Coliseum crowd. It’ll be a failed season if they’re scheduling tee times Friday morning.

The Tigers know that. They accept that. But it shouldn’t be forgotten how this team over the last three years thrives on the doubts and derision. Regardless of how bad everything appears, the Tigers have never once doubted their faith in themselves.

“You and I have talked about this before,” Alex Avila told me following the Tigers’ 8-6 Game 4 victory. “We expect to win. That doesn’t change. It doesn’t matter if we’re not playing at the level we expect from ourselves. We never lose confidence that we’re going to do what we need to do to win.”

They’re confident approaching Game 5. Why shouldn’t they be? They’ve won road Game 5s in the last two American League Division Series. Has there ever been a team that has won three consecutive Game 5s on the road in a best-of-five division series?

“I guess that it helps that we’ve gone through that,” said Austin Jackson, “but you also have to remind yourself that the past doesn’t really matter. I mean, we struggled offensively through the first three games of this series. But we knew that Game 4 was a fresh start, and we took advantage of that.”

That fresh start was the basis of a players-only meeting prior to Game 4. Martinez and Torii Hunter called the meeting. They reminded everyone to not lose that confidence, don’t lose that expectation that the truly good teams usually find that path toward salvation. Have fun. Have some fire.

That’s interesting because this has been a team occasionally criticized for not showing too much emotion. They Tigers maintained that equilibrium through the ebbs and flows of a challenging 162-game season. Some indict Jim Leyland for not instilling more of that fire. But as the team meeting proved, that’s got to come from within the clubhouse and not from the manager’s office. You must craftily pick your spots. And it can’t come artificially, simply for show.

“It’s got to be genuine and that’s what you saw out there,” Hunter said following Game 4, referring to the repetition of fist pumps from ecstatic Tigers as a dire situation evolved into a potential moment of series-winning destiny. “But nights like these remind you why this is such a great game.”

You can’t figure out this game. The uncertainty makes it fun.

The Tigers might have the advantage tonight. They’ve been through this before, although this is different than 2011 against the Yankees and last year against the A’s. Both times, the Tigers went into Game 4 with an opportunity to close out the series and lost. It was especially agonizing last year in Oakland when Jose Valverde couldn’t hold what should have been a comfortable ninth-inning lead.